A Letter from a Fan
by Madam Chaos Shadow
Summary: It's not a fic rather, I letter I just literally just wrote to Herb Scannel. I figured I'd allow everybody here to give it an overview.


Hey, everybody in the IZ community. I thought you might find this a bit interesting. You see, recently (ie: today) I wrote the below letter and shuttled it off to Herb Scannel himself. After I finished with it, I thought that, perhaps, you might appreciate being able to look it over and see how my case went. I appreciate all comments about it, because to be perfectly honest, I have never - NEVER - written a formal letter like this.  
  
I hope I made our case clear enough, and I hope I got the facts right. It would suck to get the facts wrong. Do you think I did well on this project?  
  
To Mr. Herb Scannel,  
  
Hello. You doubtless do not know who I am, for I am certain that you get plenty of mail a day and cannot sort through it individually and read everything of your own accord as such. For that matter, I would be surprised and mildly flattered if, in fact, you personally read this one. Despite the fact that I am well aware you may not have the time to get to my letter, I shall have to act as though I were, in fact, referring to you. Whosoever reads this, I know you will understand that I have the tiniest flicker of hope that you may be able to get this to Mr. Scannel himself.  
  
All such pleasantries aside, I must get down to business straightaway. Mr. Scannel, I am under the assumption that you have received literal bucket loads, and perhaps more, of mail from fans of your network as well as those that despise it, and I am one of the partial fans of your network. I oftentimes sit down to enjoy such shows as Spongebob Squarepants, Fairly Oddparents, and Hey Arnold!, but will on only the rarest of occasions bring myself to watch something such as As Told by Ginger or Rocket Power. My reasons for writing this, however, were not as such; I have something much more pressing to inform you of.  
  
Although I do enjoy several of the shows on the network, as I have stated, my personal favorite - and, I am sure, the favorite of many, many others like myself, literally hundreds of thousands of people - is Invader ZIM. I am to assume that you recall the show properly, but as a safety measure please allow me to elaborate a bit; it's basic premise is rather simply that a bumbling, hopelessly short alien and his terribly incapacitated robotic sidekick come to attempt to invade the Earth, and only one person on the entire planet is fully aware of this threat in addition to making several not-so-subtle attempts to unmask him to the public. The thing that made this show so spectacular to so many was that it was downright hilarious; the simplicity of the overall plotline made many allowances as to what could have taken place to pull everything together (or, in at least half the cases, apart), the animation was almost revolutionary once one was acquainted with the sharp images shown, and in fact the sharpness tied in quite well with the vaguely cynical scripting of the show. The voice acting could never have been more appropriate, and the characters were far more memorable and individual than most other shows - these individuals also including the random school children, all of whom were assigned names.  
  
Hopefully this is ringing a bell, for it is fully understood that in January of 2002, on the date of the seventeenth, the production of the show was cancelled. I may be a bit off on the date, but I am almost certain of such a thing.  
  
The cancellation was done with only seven shows total for the second season of the cartoon, which is hardly even a third of the originally planned twenty episodes for the second run. Reasons for the cancellation are wholly unknown at the time, although one can make many an assumption about it, though none but perhaps you and a few others could hope to prove it. But I am not writing this to discuss what may have caused the cancellation of the show.  
  
The reason I felt the need only recently to contact you was as such; despite the cancellation of production, the show itself continued to run normally for a goodly length of time on Friday night and twice on Sundays. However, things began to warp in the universe of Invader ZIM fans relatively quickly; the first strange thing that happened was that the second show was removed from Sunday, and this was quickly backed by the Friday timeslot being moved up an hour. The Friday time was then cut in half, only allowing us half an episode plus the one full one on Sunday, but ultimately the Sunday episode was also cut, giving us hardly fifteen minute of the masterpiece we loved so much.  
  
During this fifteen minutes period, it was then that Halloween rolled around, and many ZIM fans awaited eagerly the episode entitled Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom to air for the third time on the day before Halloween. Alas, upon checking up on the schedule, it was soon realized that the airing had been cancelled, leaving us all to move to our darkened corner and mope. Fortunately, on the day it should have aired, U-Pick Live happened to have the choice of Invader ZIM as one of the picks - the only time I am aware of that it was, in fact, a choice. By the spectacular score of 83% of those that voted - easily beating out Spongebob and As Told by Ginger - we were allowed to see our beloved episode, but this was hardly an end to what we felt was oppression.  
  
SLAM was then aired with Invader ZIM as a part of it, and the show was removed from the Friday lineup. Everybody was content with the SLAM showing for a long while, but then, finally, one of the most heinous acts took place; SLAM was taken off air as well, dragging Invader ZIM along with it.  
  
I understand that Invader ZIM is still airing with relative frequency on Nicktoons TV, but unfortunately many of us do not have access to the channel, and as such cannot watch this wonderful show at all anymore.  
  
To the fan base of the superb show, this was an absolute catastrophe; blasphemy of the highest order. Invader ZIM had become one of the fundamental parts of their life, and I myself was included in the populace who had a piece of their heart torn because we had been deprived the final bit of our waiting; this final bit consisted of half an episode from Season One (Walk for your Lives) and the remaining seven episodes from Season Two.   
  
As I understand it from the fan base, it is clear that you must receive a decent bit of hate mail on a regular basis from the people that wish for the show to be put back on air. Although I am one of these people that must beseech you to please allow Invader ZIM back on the normal airing schedule, I have no intention of sending you hate mail; rather, I offer you this letter.  
  
I hope you will consider your actions to take the show off the network proper and please allow it to run on the air once more. If you wish for further proof that many, many people want this show back on air, I give you the address of the largest Invader ZIM petition that I know of on the Internet; I encourage you to look it over and please reconsider my request to allow the show to run in its entirety - and perhaps proper order - one last time on Nickelodeon proper before doing away with it entirely (excluding, perhaps, frequent reruns on what I am finding to be the virtually inaccessible Nicktoons TV). The petition can be found at:  
  
http://www.petitiononline.com/izlovers/petition.html  
  
I have heard that the show's cancellation was tied in with poor ratings, but this is a falsehood, for doubtless millions watch the show weekly, and some watch Nickelodeon in hopes of seeing just this show. The fan base in its entirety includes an extremely wide range of people, from children to teenagers to adults, and hundreds of thousands of people from each of these groups has fallen in loves with this show and would be shattered if it were to completely leave Nickelodeon without any further warning.  
  
So please, Mr. Scannel, if you could allow us at the least one final run of Invader ZIM in its full entirety, I am almost certain that much of the fan base will finally find peace about the whole ordeal and, at long last, give everything a rest.   
  
I know that I, at the least, would be able to find solace and recover the part of me that left with this show, as I am sure that many other's would appreciate being able to feel again.  
  
Sincerely yours;  
  
(Chaos Shadow) 


End file.
